What a stirring, reassuring, and positive sight it was to see Education Minister Chris Hipkins greeted at the Invercargill Airport last Friday, by a very large group of protestors who were there decked out in uniforms and signs, to tell him exactly what they think of his polytech reforms.

The Southern Institute of Technology, by anyone's measure, is a success story and a yardstick for how to be flexible, original in approach, and connected to your community.

What Hipkins is trying to do with polytechs, isn't outlandish to the extent that there is no question some of it is in serious trouble. The government, or the taxpayer, has handed out $100 million in rescue money.

But critically, and this is the part Hipkins doesn’t seem to get, the ones in trouble do not represent, or anywhere close to, the whole of the sector.

And yet in his limousine leftish kind of way, he thinks that by bundling everyone together in one Wellington centralised sort of group, he'll be able to improve the outcome for everyone.

SIT is famous, of course, for their free-fees. And those free-fees attract thousands to the city who in turn stay, pump in millions, and according to the Mayor saved the place. Twenty years ago no one was going backwards faster than Invercargill.

Now even if you allow for a little bit of the famous Shadbolt hyperbole, there is no doubt that if you want to look at how a polytech should be, and could be run, then Invercargill's version is as good as it gets. So why then, they ask, as they stood there at the airport, would you want to mess with that?

Why would you want to take what is working perfectly fine and change it, upend it, or lump it in with a bunch of operators that aren't?

The same sort of argument is being put forward by the ITOs, the industry training operators. Business knows what they need and how they need it, and yet Hipkins and his Wellington apparatchiks say otherwise.

Just what sort of business acumen does Hipkins bring to this equation? What experience in running things does he have? And why, given the answer is none, does he think he can override the aspirations of those who actually do?

What sort of slap in the face is it to see a Minister with an"I know best" sort of attitude, roll into town, and look at your transformational operation, and say sorry?

Here's a thought, how about spending a bit of time and energy on the ones that have lost their way, and get the hell out of the faces of those who haven't?